The Lorne Variation
by Kethry47
Summary: Sheppard goes haring off into the unkown and Lorne has to mind the shop - again. Some missing scenes from "The Daedalus Variations".


AUTHOR'S NOTE: While I wholeheartedly love SGA, there were still moments during the five seasons that I wished for someone to fill in the often very obvious gaps or keep an eye on continuity or give us some back story or … You follow?

The more I saw of the delightful Major Lorne, for example, the more I wished he'd been used better and more often in the show. *sigh* TPTB put him in the show and then mostly relegated him to giving cues for Sheppard or playing fetch. Well, since TPTB refused to deliver, I decided to take matters into my own hands and write at least some of the things I wanted to see. As a starting place, season five seemed as good as any, especially as the ideas and gripes I have with those episodes are still so much fresher --- hey, age is creeping up on all of us sooner or later. ;)

So, after the missing scene/tag to _"Search and Rescue"_ (Healing) and the re-telling/many missing scenes to _"The Seed"_ (Ye shall reap…), here are a few scenes that explain something that bothered me about _"The Daedalus Variations"._

Right from the start of the episode, I wondered where Richard Woolsey had disappeared to. After he had made it so blatantly clear in his debut in "_The Seed"_ and later in "_Broken Ties"_ that from now on, he would be the one who called the shots and that he wouldn't sit still for Sheppard's escapades, it was all the more inexplicable that he wasn't around in DV at all. Well, here's my explanation.

PS: I got the Czech from an online dictionary, so I honestly have no idea if it really means what it's supposed to mean. I'd better apologize in case I have Zelenka saying something inappropriate. Sorry!

**The Lorne Variation**

_In music, __**variation**__ is a formal technique where material is altered during repetition: reiteration with changes. (Wikipedia)_

"Woolsey still sick?"

"Yep. Seems he's finally lucid again, but according to Keller he'll have to stay in isolation for a few more days; there's no telling if he might still be contagious. And after that, plenty of rest and no stress."

"Hmph!"

"Rodney!"

"Well, you all know what Woolsey is like," McKay defended himself against Sheppard's mildly chastising glance.

"Anyway, he's asked to be kept in the loop, but Keller says we're not to tell him anything that might make his blood pressure go up. He's still too sick, and any kind of excitement could cause a relapse." Sheppard regarded the assembly around the table in the conference room with a stern glance. "We carry on managing the city on our own - nice and easy, and without any big bangs. No testing new gadgets that go boom, no desperate missions off-world that require SAR; you don't even burn a cake in the kitchen, got it? I notice an unscheduled earthquake or have some horrendous smell creep up on me in the halls, and you can all get your toothbrushes out and prepare to scrub Atlantis from top to bottom."

From where he sat opposite Sheppard, Lorne had a clear view of the effect his CO's announcement had on their company. A variety of looks appeared especially on the scientists' faces. What they were hearing didn't gel with the laid-back attitude the colonel usually displayed. Now they weren't sure whether to take him seriously or not.

Sheppard let his eyes make the round to see how his Big-Brother-Is-Watching-You speech was received. Expressions ranged from slightly bewildered (Zelenka) to outraged and about to boil over (McKay). Lorne tried to keep a straight face, but from the twitching of the colonel's lips he knew that some of his quiet amusement was coming through.

When Rodney started muttering not-so-quietly to himself, Sheppard obviously took this as an indication that he needed to reinforce his orders. He lightly rapped his knuckles on the table. "I mean it." He caught McKay's eyes. "Keep thinking you're rocking a sleeping baby. Practice lullabies, brush up on your best behaviour, tiptoe through the … city," he finished lamely.

Lorne had to suppress a smirk. Not even Sheppard was gonna tell them to 'tiptoe through the tulips'. There had to be a line somewhere.

From countless talks off the record, Lorne knew that as far as his CO was concerned, daily morning briefings rated somewhere between filling out requisition forms and being tortured by the less than friendly elements of the Pegasus galaxy – extremely annoying and at times excruciatingly painful. He usually sat through them, because – like requesting paper clips – regular briefings couldn't be avoided, were even necessary up to a point, but he hated having to conduct them. Lorne mostly felt the same. Riding herd on a bunch of overbearing, bickering scientists wasn't the military's idea of fun. It was even worse now with Keller on their backs, demanding they 'keep the city quiet.' Morning briefings seldom did anything to support the idea of a _quiet_ Atlantis.

Thankfully, this one was just about finished. The past two weeks had seen Sheppard run entirely too many of them for his comfort, not counting the ones he'd pushed off on Lorne, because _'this whole mess is your fault, anyway, so you deal with the whining and grouching hordes!' _

"Hey! And in the unlikely event that something unusual _should_ happen, you come to me or Lorne – or possibly McKay, understood? "

Murmurs of "yes, sir", "sure", "'kay", "whatever" and a "Why to _me_, haven't I got enough to do already?" showed that he had been heard, at least. Whether he'd been understood, or would be followed, was another matter.

Lorne didn't need a crystal ball to know that Sheppard would be one of the few people who'd be _very_ happy to see Richard Woolsey recovered from the flu-like infection he'd brought back from a visit to Dimeon, one of the planets they traded with on a regular basis. Tanaf, Dimeon's king, had wanted to meet the new leader of Atlantis. Woolsey had been happy to comply and use the chance to brush up on his skills as an Earth diplomat and first representative of Atlantis – his words.

Accompanied by Lorne and his team, Woolsey had set out for an overnight state visit. On Dimeon he'd been received enthusiastically. The Dimeonans, while nice enough people, had never been quite able to wrap their minds around the idea of having to deal with first Elizabeth Weir and later, Sam Carter, in an official leadership capacity. Women simply did not do that kind of thing.

With Woolsey in charge, their view of how the world had to be was finally restored. He'd been wined, dined and offered the services of a nubile, young lady for the remainder of the night.

According to Lorne's marines, all three offers had been a testament to the good taste and generosity of the Dimeonans. He wasn't sure whether the fact that Woolsey accepted the first two and politely declined the third registered as a plus or minus on the scales as far as Fredericks and Meyers were concerned. They all agreed, however, that Woolsey had made quite an impact among the Dimeonans with his knowledge of fine wines. Dimeonan wine was legendary and one of the planet's biggest export items. King Tanaf had gifted Woolsey with a case of the excellent red that had been served at dinner.

Unfortunately, the wine hadn't been the only thing Woolsey had brought back from Dimeon. A couple of days after the visit, he'd come down with what Keller classified as a particularly aggressive Pegasus version of the flu, something the people of Pegasus had developed if not an immunity to than at least a certain level of tolerance against.

It wasn't uncommon for Earth personnel to catch it on one of their first off-world missions. Unlike Kirsan fever, however, there was no easy remedy. There was none, in fact, but no one had thought that a problem – until then. Like with the common cold, people usually spent a couple of days in the infirmary riding out the symptoms, took a few additional rest days, and they were good to go again.

In Woolsey's case, the illness had manifested itself with a rarely seen violence. Apparently, he was one of the few people whose genetic make-up couldn't handle the infection at all. He'd fallen into a coma on the second day and hadn't woken up for the next three. After that, he'd started a dangerously high fever and had periodically fallen in and out of consciousness. Now, ten days later, he was no longer feverish and hallucinating, but still weak as a new-born kitten, and Keller wasn't sure when he'd be able to go back on duty. So Sheppard ran the city – hating every red tape moment of it.

"That's it then for today, folks!"

Stretching unobtrusively – after almost an hour of sitting still and listening to the various departments bitch, complain and demand – Lorne pushed his chair back.

On the other side of the table, Sheppard breathed a deep sigh – probably of relief at finally being able to say the words. Morning briefings seldom generated anything exciting, so most people regarded them as a necessary bureaucratic evil to endure. Once in a while, something interesting would turn up, but the past two weeks had been singularly uneventful, bordering on boring. Lorne was convinced Sheppard only kept to the schedule because not to might have confirmed Woolsey's suspicion that the colonel didn't believe them necessary, useful or possessed of any intrinsic value.

Catching the colonel's eye, Lorne walked over to him when Sheppard nodded.

"Tomorrow they are all yours, Lorne." Sheppard announced with undisguised glee, turning to grin at Lorne. He would be off-world, finalizing a new trade treaty. Something else Woolsey had meant to do to get acquainted with another of their allies, something that Sheppard was now gladly seizing to get away.

"Lullabies, sir?" Lorne cocked an eyebrow. He didn't want to mention the tiptoeing and the unscheduled earthquakes. Atlantis had its share of shakes and quakes, and blowing up parts of the city while innocently trying to make some Ancient machine or other work wasn't unheard of. Sheppard's admonition hadn't been totally unfounded, but Lorne thought the toothbrushes and the lullabies had a certain touch of overkill. The dark looks some of the science team members had thrown around probably meant a lot of snarking and finger pointing tomorrow when Sheppard wasn't around.

"First thing that came to mind," Sheppard answered with a totally unapologetic shrug. "Gotta go," he added and pushed his chair back. "We can go over tomorrow's agenda later."

"Yes, sir." Lorne had a pretty good idea what had caused the leap from the recovering Woolsey to the sleeping baby analogy. McKay had been grumbling for the past couple of days about what he presumed to be a slight to his parenting skills and more over, an insult to his status as midwife.

When Lorne saw Rodney heading over to them with a certain gleam in his eyes, he beat a hasty retreat. On his way out of the conference room, he overheard the beginnings of yet another round of griping.

"I'm telling you, she's hiding him from me!"

"She's not hiding him!" Sheppard sounded exasperated.

"Oh, yeah?" McKay wouldn't let it go. "Every time I go to see him, she tells me that he's just settled down."

Sheppard sighed. "Can you blame her? You dropped him." Which, according to what Lorne had been told, was true.

McKay, of course, saw it differently. "I did _not_ drop him! He jumped."

"Major, wait up! Take a look at this." Lorne never heard Sheppard's answer to Rodney's interesting interpretation of what had happened the one time he'd been allowed to hold Torren. He waited for Zelenka to catch up to him and show him the analysis of the geological data he and his team had collected on their last off-world mission.

* * *

"You hold the fort till I'm back, Lorne." Sheppard clipped a P-90 to his vest. McKay was still struggling with the zipper on his tac vest, while Ronon simply loomed half inside, half out of the locker room, waiting for them to finish. He didn't need any prep time; he was always ready to go roaring off at a moment's notice. Teyla stood behind McKay, geared up and serene, watching the men with a tolerant half-smile.

"You'd better call in Zelenka to monitor our approach. He'll be able to keep an eye on things from here and notify us of any changes that we might miss." Sheppard continued his instructions. He adjusted his vest till he was satisfied it wasn't chafing anywhere, before drawing his sidearm for a quick inspection. He looked up at his XO.

"Already done, sir!" In fact, Lorne had called the Czech up to the control room as soon as he'd heard about the Daedalus mysteriously appearing in orbit, unscheduled and apparently sans her crew.

Lorne had never expected Sheppard to do the sensible leader thing and let him or one of the lieutenants check out the abandoned ship. Tied to the city for the past two weeks and bored out of his skull, there was no way Sheppard would pass up this opportunity to escape from pushing paper and herding scientists.

"…. And don't tell Woolsey, until you absolutely have to!" That wasn't unexpected, either. Richard Woolsey was the only one who might have kept Sheppard from taking a jumper up into orbit. Probably by giving the colonel one of those looks meant to remind him of the command structure, and thereby ordering him to stay, indirectly or if that didn't work, then directly. On the other hand, there was a riddle up there, and Sheppard had never been able to resist a mystery so far.

"I won't," Lorne promised. He hoped he wouldn't have to. A ship that had the Daedalus I.F.F. was gliding overhead; the space around the planet had proved otherwise empty and quiet; they had a jumper fleet that could be ready and up there inside of minutes, and Lorne had the marines and the medical staff on stand-by --- just in case this turned out to be an elaborate trap or a medical emergency on a ship-wide scale. The need to go down to the infirmary and report to Woolsey shouldn't arise.

As usual, Murphy's Law didn't care what Lorne thought.

* * *

"Colonel Sheppard, do you read? Daedalus, this is Atlantis, please respond." Lorne turned around from his vantage point above the gate room to look back at Zelenka. "What the hell is going on?"

Zelenka gave him a baffled shrug in response. "I don't know. One moment they were there … and the next minute, they were gone."

"Gone? What do you mean _gone_?" Lorne closed the distance up to Zelenka's console. "Gone where?"

"I don't know," Zelenka wailed, frustrated and a little afraid. "Just … just gone! Poof! ... Pryč! … Zaniklý!" He gestured helplessly with both hands and turned his bemused eyes to Lorne as if hoping he would clarify things.

Loren did his best. "Did we register a hyperspace window?" he asked, starting to mentally tick off possible scenarios. Zelenka only shook his head. "An explosion? Is there any indication she might have blown up?" To be truthful, that had been his immediate thought, bombs, booby traps, McKay accidentally setting off … something… anything that might explain this sudden silence. He'd just liked the hyperspace window idea better.

"No, nothing," the Czech countered. His growing agitation was evidenced by the way he slurred his vowels and stumbled over some words. "The instruments show nothing. There is no … no residue … of an explosion, no debris, nothing. Just empty space. They simply … disappeared." His voice rose on the last word.

Lorne drew a deep, steadying breath. He had to stay calm. There had to be an explanation, all they had to do was find it. He didn't want to have to go down to the infirmary and tell Woolsey that their leading military officer and his team had vanished into thin air…well, empty space, to be precise. He sighed and rubbed a hand along the side of head. He could already feel the headache starting. Why could nothing ever be as simple as it looked?

"Zelenka!" He grabbed the other man's arm. "Is it possible that it's our instruments; that they are malfunctioning?" He knew he was clutching at straws, but he wanted to run through every possible explanation before he went to talk Keller into letting him ruin Woolsey's recovery. "You know, like … some … magnetic wave or some such thing hit us, and we simply can't see them anymore?"

Zelenka pursed his lips and silently shook his head. He turned the monitor around for Lorne to see for himself. Everything else read clearly. There was just this empty hole where the mysterious Daedalus doppelganger had been sitting only minutes before.

"And I guess no one is messing with our heads, either, right?" Lorne asked, more to finish his mental list of things that could go wrong than in the actual hope of having found the solution.

"Ahem…," Zelenka started with a confused look.

"Yeah…,"Lorne sighed, closing his eyes tiredly and pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers to stave off the headache for another minute. "How would we know?" Another deep breath later and he tapped his ear piece. "Doctor Keller, this is Major Lorne." She answered right away. She'd been on alert, too. "Doc, is there any way someone could be influencing our perception? Would you be able to tell?"

He wasn't surprised that his cryptic questions got him an invitation to the infirmary, to be thoroughly checked out. He went, leaving the control room in Zelenka's hands with instructions to call him the second anything changed.

Some time later, he slid off the diagnostic bed and looked at Keller. "Nothing?"

"Nothing that we or any of the instruments can detect," she confirmed. "It's not a one hundred percent guarantee, but to the best of my knowledge…" She tapered off with a vague wave of her hands. Her eyebrows lifted with an unhappy look. "You're perfectly healthy and everything looks normal." Which was small comfort in some ways at least; in others it left him with the unenviable task of talking to Richard Woolsey.

"Doctor Zelenka, this is Major Lorne. Come in, please." He ought to check one last time with Radek. "Please, tell me you have something for me." He listened with closed eyes. There was no escaping the headache. "So, no changes?"

When the Czech answered in the negative, Lorne sighed. Not that he had expected any last minute miracles, but it would have been nice for a change. He turned to Keller, "Doc, I am afraid I need to speak to Mr Woolsey."

* * *

Several hours and a lot of pacing later, Lorne still had no clue as to what had happened to Sheppard and his team. Richard Woolsey, predictably, hadn't been thrilled to learn of their disappearance – once Keller had given in and let Lorne open the intercom to talk to him.

Lorne had briefly toyed with the idea of hiding behind her and her adamant and repeated refusal to let him disturb the sick man. It would have gotten him – and Sheppard – some period of grace, some time to maybe make sense of the mystery. But in the end, he'd decided it wasn't worth it. Nothing was going to change by sitting on this, and Woolsey had a right to learn about something of this magnitude ASAP. So he'd gone and told him.

His brain still smarted from the veiled verbal lashing he'd received. Not that Woolsey had been abusive. The ex-IOA representative didn't have to stoop to scathing remarks to get his point across. He could express a lot with very little, even laid up in a quarantine room.

Regrettably, Lorne didn't have a lot to put against Woolsey's indignation at not having been consulted in the first place. Taking cover behind Keller seemed a coward's way out, and Lorne wasn't the kind of man who'd place the blame on his superior officer, either. Besides, in Sheppard's place, Lorne probably would have done exactly the same. Unfortunately, it still left him holding the ball.

"If they don't reappear soon, we will have to inform the IOA and the SGC!" had been Woolsey's instructions before Keller had pulled medical rank and terminated their talk.

Lorne thought that the order of who to inform was very interesting. It clearly showed where Woolsey's loyalties and priorities lay. Not that Lorne had ever had any doubts about it. This just confirmed his assumption.

Reluctantly, he took the packet of Tylenol Keller had handed him out of the inner pocket of his jacket and swallowed another couple of pills. His headache wasn't getting any better.

Lorne ran his hand through his hair. Together, he and Radek had racked their brains, trying to find an angle they hadn't pursued yet to find their missing people. Nothing came up. Zelenka had been relentless in his efforts to recalibrate his instruments for any and all possible readings. Apart from that strange energy spike they had recorded shortly before the ship vanished, he hadn't found anything. Lorne had Osbourne and Cheng take a jumper up into orbit to do a visual search, with no result other than that they had reported a bank of nasty-looking clouds apparently headed for the city. The planet had a rainy season and lately, that had been making every effort to live up to its name.

"Sir, this needs your signature," Lena Vaughn had come up and handed him a requisition form. He took the stylus and was about to add his signature when the control room called him over. Another contact had just appeared on their screens.

Quickly, Lorne scribbled something unintelligible, handed form and stylus back and hurried up to the console rack. "Is it the Daedalus?"

Zelenka shrugged and sat down in front of one of the monitors. "They're too far out for us to get I.F.F." Nervously, he fiddled with his glasses.

"Try sub-space," Lorne instructed. He tried not to get his hopes up too high. He wanted it to be the fake Daedalus with Sheppard and the others safely on board, having some tall tale to tell that they could all laugh about over a bottle of beer later. But he didn't believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny, either – much.

Chuck flipped a switch to activate the necessary controls and nodded for Lorne to speak.

"Colonel Sheppard, do you read?"

Only the silence of space answered him. All activity in the control room had stopped. Lorne knew that everybody had their eyes on him. He tried again. "Colonel Sheppard, this is Major Lorne. Do you read?" He put more emphasis behind it as if by insisting it had to be them, he could make it fact.

When he still got no answer he turned to Chuck. "Was there a hyperspace window?"

The technician shook his head: "No, sir. They just appeared out of nowhere."

Based on hope and his belief that Sheppard, McKay and the others could make the impossible possible, Lorne decided to chance it. "It's _gotta_ be them," he stated with as much conviction as he could put behind something so vague. Catching Chuck's eye, he said, "Alert Mr Woolsey." No use keeping the man out of the loop. He'd find out anyway. He cocked his head at Zelenka. "Doc, you're with me. Let's go. Come on."

Zelenka shot up out of his seat as if he'd only been waiting for the order, and together they rushed off to the jumper bay.

* * *

"Do you suppose it's really them?" Zelenka asked with an odd inflection. The two men were in the locker room, kitting out for their trip into space.

Lorne slipped his tac vest on and turned around to look at the Czech. He recognized the mixture of doubt and optimism on the other man's face. To some extent he felt the same, but he made sure not to show it. He had to keep up the façade; anything else would be bad for morale – Zelenka's and his own. "It's got to be them! Who else would it be?" Lorne pulled the zipper up and patted the vest pockets down. "Besides, if it's not them, we certainly have a new problem on our hands – and that's not something we need right now," he voiced the thought that had been on his mind ever since the mysterious contact had appeared on their screens.

"Huh?" Zelenka stared at him, uncomprehending, and grabbed a hanger with a tac vest his size. He shook the protective garment off the hanger, placed the computer tablet he'd been clutching on the bench next to him and put his right arm through one of the armholes of the vest.

"If it's not them, then some unknown ship has just appeared on our doorstep." Lorne furrowed his brow. "Which could turn into big trouble." He didn't add that it might also mean that he and Zelenka were heading out into a potentially very dangerous situation. Zelenka was nervous enough already and could probably do without the reminder.

Lorne tightened the Velcro snaps of his thigh holster and slid his M9 out for a quick visual check. He didn't think he would need the weapon, but you never knew. Besides, he'd feel naked deploying without it. The final check was a procedure that didn't even require conscious thought anymore. You packed, you checked. When a muted grumbling in Czech reached his ears, he looked up.

In his apprehension, Zelenka had managed to twist his vest. It hung front-side back from his shoulder and he was fumbling for the other armhole in vain. Under different circumstances, his contortions would have been funny -- now, they only served to hold them up.

Lorne slid the M9 back into its holster, automatically securing the gun. He stepped up to the struggling scientist and held the vest for him so he could easily slip it on.

Zelenka gave Lorne a weak, embarrassed smile. "Thanks," he mumbled and zippered the vest up. He rolled his shoulders to settle it.

Lorne only nodded and tapped his ear-piece. "Lorne to control room. Any changes on the contact?" He listened to the answer and shook his head at Zelenka. "Still just sitting there," he confirmed. "Seems we have no choice but to go and take a look at it."

He grabbed the P-90 he'd checked out of the armoury – just in case – and took a hold of Zelenka's arm. "Come on, Doc. Time to go." He turned the surprised scientist towards the exit. Zelenka made a desperate lunge for his computer tablet and barely managed to scoop it up before he was dragged out into the hall and was practically frog-marched to the transporter.

"Next stop jumper bay!"

* * *

"What the hell just happened?" Lorne tried not to growl, though he felt like doing just that.

He'd taken the jumper out into orbit as fast as the small ship would go. They were quickly closing in on the position of the strange contact. Zelenka's eyes were glued to the changing readings on the various displays in front of him, while Lorne was too much of a pilot to rely on instruments alone. In his years in Atlantis, he had learned to trust the Ancient systems, but sometimes, he still trusted his eyes more.

The huge spaceship was right in front of them, and the closer they got, the more it looked like a Daedalus that couldn't be the Daedalus. And now this … this bright flash had almost blinded him before the jumper's automatic defence systems could react and darken the screen.

One moment the ship had hung almost within reach, the next it was no longer there.

Lorne swivelled in his seat and looked at Zelenka. For a few heartbeats, he nurtured the irrational hope that the instruments would tell him that - despite what his eyes had just witnessed - nothing had changed. But a weird déjà vu feeling was creeping up on him, freezing the blood in his veins. _'Not again!'_

Zelenka swallowed and with a helpless wave of his hand, he stated the obvious, "They disappeared." He frowned and checked the jumper's display console again. Nervously, his fingers danced over the touch screen.

Lorne didn't move. Every impulse inside of him wanted to deny the facts. "Whoa, whoa, what are you talking about?" He turned his head and looked up, peering intently through the window, checking the empty star field. The déjà vu was no longer creeping up, it had arrived. _'Not – again! Not when they had been so close. Dammit!'_

"Well, they're – they're just – gone." Zelenka confirmed, bewildered.

Their eyes met. Lorne could see the despair reappearing in Zelenka's gaze. He almost jumped in his seat when the console in front of the Czech suddenly emitted several piercing beeps.

Zelenka's head snapped back to the console. His eyes flew over the monitor, taking in new data. "Oh, wait a minute," he announced with surprise. "I'm picking up four life signs."

Lorne was too startled to be surprised. He stared out into the darkness. "Okay, where?"

"Dead ahead," Zelenka answered and pointed vaguely at the space in front of them.

Both men leaned forward and peered though the shield, hoping for visual confirmation.

Far in the distance, Lorne thought he could just make out tiny shapes that stood out against the velvety background. He didn't think there were fata morganas in space, so that left …. "Colonel Sheppard? … Is that you?" he asked, hope and uncertainty warring in his voice.

Several seconds went by in silence. Lorne could almost hear his heart beat. Then a breathless, but familiar voice filled the interior of the jumper cabin.

"Major, … nice of you to stop by. … Kind of hard to get a cab in this neighbourhood."

At Sheppard's flippant answer a grin blossomed on Lorne's face.

" Yes, sir." Lorne didn't care that his relief was audible. He directed the jumper towards the four tiny forms and sent a silent 'thank you' to whoever had left the space suits on the mysterious Daedalus for them.

Twenty minutes later, the ramp in the back of the jumper closed on the last of their errant comrades. Somehow, somewhere, McKay had been wounded, and it had taken the combined efforts of Sheppard and Ronon to guide him into the open jumper, while Lorne and Zelenka could only watch and wait in the sealed forward compartment.

"We're in," Sheppard's voice declared over the com. "You can repressurize now, Lorne."

Lorne activated the control, waiting for the indicator that said it was safe to open the partition. Finally the all-clear flashed, and he was out of his seat before the panels had a chance to fully retract. He stopped where the door had been a moment before, looking at the four people in front of him.

Sheppard was already easing the helmet of his suit up and over his head. He dropped it carelessly on the bench where it bounced against a slumping, suit-clad form that had to be McKay. Next to him, the unmistakably tall form of Ronon almost split the seams of his suit, while Teyla's slender body leaned against the rear wall of the jumper, her fingers busy on the clamps that would separate suit and helmet. She smiled at Lorne through the vision plate of her helmet.

Soon all four were breathing the clean air of the jumper. Teyla dressed McKay's arm, and once Sheppard had assured Lorne that McKay would survive until he could be properly treated in Atlantis -- despite Rodney's glare and a mumbled complaint -- Lorne returned to the pilot seat and set the jumper on a course back home. Zelenka had already radioed ahead to alert Keller and to reassure the crew in the control room.

"Glad to have us back, Lorne?" Sheppard asked. He slouched comfortably in the seat behind Lorne, obviously content to be a passenger for once.

"Yes, sir," Lorne answered with a grin. Then a thought occurred to him. "Ahem, sir, there's something you need to know."

"You told Woolsey?" It wasn't really a question.

"Sorry, sir, but I had no choice."

* * *

"So, what did he say?" Lorne knew Sheppard knew the question was more rhetorical than actual inquiry, so he didn't expect more than the expressive shrug he got.

"The usual," Sheppard announced and flopped into a chair opposite Lorne. He stretched his long legs out at the side of the table. They were in the commissary and Lorne had brought a coffee pot and some cups over in anticipation of company. Sheppard grabbed a cup and poured. He took a sip and let his eyes roam the room. It was mostly empty. Official dinner time was over and the stragglers hadn't come in yet. No one gave the two officers a second look. It was a couple of hours after Lorne and Zelenka had fished Sheppard and his team out of space. The latest adventure of Sheppard's band of intrepid explorers was already old news.

"Don't go haring off without permission; don't "forget" to alert me; remember who's boss; don't do it again?" Lorne suggested deadpan.

"Dead on, except for the permission part," Sheppard admitted with a shrug. "Woolsey called it official authorization."

They grinned at each other wryly.

Lorne leaned back in his chair. "Do you suppose we'll encounter that ship again, sir?" he asked and looked at his CO over the rim of his cup. He blew on the hot liquid and tried another sip.

Sheppard made a face and swirled his coffee around in the cup. "McKay thinks not," he finally answered. "He's convinced the drive has burned itself out by now." With a thoughtful look, he added, "It'll be harder to keep him from tinkering with the concept." He sighed and rolled his head to get a kink out. "We'll just have to keep him busy."

"Hunh," Lorne mumbled around his coffee. That would be Sheppard's job, if it could be done at all.

"Yeah," Sheppard knew it as well. "So, you all set for tomorrow?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Tomorrow, sir?" Lorne responded, momentarily confused.

Sheppard put his empty cup down and stood up. "That morning briefing's still all yours," he announced with a smirk, pushed the chair back under the table and turned to leave.

"Thank you very much, sir," Lorne commented dryly to Sheppard's retreating back. He poured himself another cup of coffee and grinned. He stretched against the back of his chair. Things were back to normal – Atlantis-kind of normal.


End file.
